A subtly powerful article about scavenging that makes you think when seeing where some of this stuff comes from. A good read for sure and something useful to know as we move deeper into depression. Thanks Salon for posting this.

The minute I read that many months ago, I realized that there was something unreal going on in the CDS market. By "unreal" I mean something that is given value even though it is not attached to real assets. And the more I researched, the more I realized that was true.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Absolutely the best thing I have seen in the way of captioning videos. Open source, free and down loadable, (Mac only for now) this tech makes a BIG difference in allowing more people to interact with video. The image below shows how Capscribeworks.

The site is chock full of examples and links to other tools designed to enhance the communicative process. Terrific resource to be sure. To get MagPie (an equivalent captioner for Windows and Mac), click on the NCAM logo seen below.

Click on this extraordinary map to see how the major disciplines of man relate to one another courtesy of PLOSOne, the open source repository that's changing how science & medicine does business. The article, Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Scienceused the following criteria to show how the sciences and the humanities interact with each other on the web.

Click on the image above to view the slide show accompanying this amazing article. In seeing how the sciences and humanities interact as a system for the first time, the start point to solving society's most complex problems becomes possible.

For me, I have much better feelings for one who professes NOT to be a person of faith rather than one who does because to question who we are and what place we have in reality is, to me, far braver than giving way to a "higher power" and acquiescing to that entity the essential characteristics of what it means to be human.

Danial Roth's prescient article about real transparency and Wall Street has implications that go far beyond the raisond'ete of keeping tabs on an industry run amok. It's really a blueprint about how all significant business on planet earth should operate. Instead of regulation, you

Provide universal access to investors and the public alike by putting the data on the web, thus eliminating the costly and often inefficient regulatory agencies (SEC ?) that don't guard the hen house due to budgetary constraints and hidden pressures from businesses that don't want to be regulated.

Because the web is the connect to the world, why not use this powerful resource to eliminate or improve relegatory guidelines in all of government. For starters, patent application is now going online with peer review of same, something long overdue in this era of patent trolls in search of a quick buck. To see where this is going, click on the icon below.

Last but not least, isn't it about time for people to have the right to directly vote on issues that affect us all? Why should Congress have complete control over the voting process on such vitally important matters such as war or the economy because in many instances, they were wrong (Bank Bailouts, Iraq & Vietnam anyone?). Prior to the web, the notion of direct voting by the public was not possible but now it is.

Changing the Constitution to enable direct voting on national issues is more than idle speculation as Thomas Jefferson stated repeatedly that the Constitution should be revisited every 20 years and changed as needs warrant because he realized society and technology would change and governance should change with it.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

To follow up on Musings, here's a really good post from TNT about banks and the tools Valdis Krebs, the author, used in analyzing how they got into trouble. Every endeavor known to man has a cost. Because of this fact, the question one must ask before doing the endeavor is, Do the benefits outweigh the costs? - RM

In looking at the inherent ethical neutrality of tech and how it relates to the machinations of man, the type of impact it can have on the world totally depends on who's running the system. On one end, computing points the way to finally understanding how photosynthesis actually works in order to build truly efficient solar collectors while on the other, the same computer transforms dollars into bits able to be rolled into Certificates of Debt Obligations or Derivative Swaps, abstract financial instruments whose sole intent is to generate something out of nothing, which, in large part, helped to plunge this country into depression.

Because technology advances at double exponential rates, the need to make the right choices in controlling this valuable resource for the benefit of society depends on the kind of morality we have as a species or, as Peter Parker's Uncle Ben so rightly says, With great power comes great responisibility.